Accessible Habitat Mapping

The creation of habitat maps from multispectral satellite imagery has typically required expensive software and specialized knowledge. These techniques have been beyond the reach of the ecologists and resource managers who need to use habitat maps. The Marine Optical Remote sEnsing Map and Assessment Production System (MORE-MAPS) is being developed to simplify the process and make map users into map producers.

Main Components

The following free and open source software projects were created to support MORE-MAPS.

Benthic Photo Survey

An open source software tool for efficiently processing photo survey data. It was created to assist with the preparation of reference data (a.k.a. ground truth) for benthic habitat mapping. Learn more on the BPS website.

OpticalRS

OpticalRS is a free and open source Python implementation of passive optical remote sensing methods for the derivation of bathymetric maps and maps of submerged habitats. OpticalRS contains most of the code that makes up MORE-MAPS. Additionally, OpticalRS includes my interpretation of several widely used methods from the optical remote sensing literature. Learn more.